Backyard Stargazer: January 2017
By Francis Parnell
With all of the bright stars and constellations rising in winter, January is a great time to start stargazing.
At sunset on the 1st, look for a thin crescent Moon 5-degrees to the lower right of sparkling white Venus. Red, but dimmer
Mars is 12-degrees upper left of Venus.
Francis Parnell, the Backyard Stargazer of Darlington
At sunset on the 2nd, find the Moon about 4-degrees to the lower right of Mars and approximately 6-degrees to the upper left of Venus.
On January 4th at 9a.m. Earth reaches Perihelion – its closest point to the Sun all year – at 91,404,322 miles.
Brilliant Venus reaches Greatest Elongation of 47-degrees east of the Sun on the 12th and sets about 3 hours after the Sun for the rest of the month. Greatest Elongation means it’s the maximum possible angle between the Sun and an inner planet. For Venus it’s 47-degrees and Mercury it’s 28-degrees.
For early risers on the 19th, the Moon, Jupiter, and “Spica.” the brightest star in Virgo, form a close 6-degree triangle just before dawn. Binoculars will give a really nice view!
At dawn on the 24th, look southeast to find a slim crescent Moon about 3-degrees to the upper left of the ringed planet Saturn and about 6-degrees above Mercury on the 25th.
At dusk on the 31st, look west-southwest to see a triangle formed by the waxing crescent Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Last month I mentioned the constellation of ORION, the Hunter. Rising in the east in early January, it’s the brightest winter constellation and easily found; some mistakenly refer to it as “The Big Dipper.” Actually, the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, the Big Bear, is a circumpolar constellation. ORION is on the equator.
Let’s look at the two brightest stars in ORION. Betelgeuse, the 9th largest star found so far, is a huge Red Super-giant 640 light years away, 1,200 times the diameter and 14, 000 times the luminosity of the Sun. If it were placed at the center of the solar system it would reach well beyond the orbit of Jupiter! Rigel, 860 light years away, is a hot, blue-white Super-giant that at 20,000 degrees is twice the Sun’s temperature, 74 times the diameter and 52,500 times the Sun’s luminosity. The three stars that make up the “Belt of ORION” lie between 800 to 1300 light years away and are also blue-white Super-giants that range from 14,000 to 40,000 times brighter than the Sun.
Happy New Year! And “Keep looking up!”
Francis Parnell of Darlington has been an amateur astronomer for over 46 years, and was on the staff and helped out at the Francis Marion University Observatory from 1982 until 2006 by showing visitors “what’s out there.” With the help of a friend, Mr. Ernest Lowry, he built his own telescope in 1986. And, because of light pollution, for the last 31 years he has been advocating for the advantages of using fully-shielded lighting at night.